[Quadrant] The First King of Australia: Geopolitics Then and Now
Andrew Roberts has written a sumptuous biography, George III: The Life and Reign of Britain’s Most Misunderstood Monarch, published in the US as The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III. Yet for all its 784 pages, Roberts omits his subject’s most significant achievement: the founding of modern Australia.
Roberts mentions the King’s contribution of £4000 to Captain Cook’s Endeavour voyage in 1768. He also refers to the King’s 1787 instruction to Governor-designate Arthur Phillip, to treat the indigenous population with kindness and respect and seek peaceful co-existence. Botany Bay, however, has one index entry for just one and a half lines. It is “a destination for the transportation of British convicts”. George III is nowhere to be seen.
Roberts is not alone. Other biographers of George III and of his prime minister, William Pitt the Younger, also fall in with the cleverly crafted cover story put out at the time by the Home Office. No one comments on the distance, the cost or the politics. The audacious operation did not touch the lives or the office of their protagonists. It was a housekeeping matter of “law and order” that hardly warrants a paragraph.
In fact, convicts were not the reason for the expensive antipodean colony, but they were vital to the success of the Botany Bay campaign. They provided a critical mass of travel-ready occupiers at a time when Eurocentric law required actual occupation, not just a flag-waving visitor, to secure title to new lands. The convicts also provided cheap labour for the term of their sentence (after which they were eligible for a grant of land). Consequently, Australia is the only continent free from the legacy of slavery. Finally, the convicts provided the all-important smokescreen: the world would see that Britain was merely ridding itself of derelicts; it was not reaching to extend its empire to the far side of the globe.
At the time, secrecy was crucial and the cover story seemed to work, although there were plenty of sceptics even then. Yet it’s odd that more than two centuries later scholars still accept the government line that Pitt’s near-bankrupt administration undertook the crippling expense of sending 750 pickpockets to the opposite side of the world, merely to get rid of them. It’s a silly story, but it stuck, thanks mainly to repetition, which eventually makes things true: proof by repeated assertion, an idée reçue.
The Botany Bay decision, made suddenly and unexpectedly on August 18, 1786, was arguably the most significant decision made by George III and by Prime Minister Pitt during their incumbencies. Secrecy was paramount, so documentation is minimal. As Professor Ged Martin writes, “the problem facing the historian of the founding of Australia is that little more than the government’s laundry bills survive from 1786–88”.
Still, there is sufficient evidence to show that the aim of both men was to shape the geopolitics of the globe. The imperial struggle between Britain and France had shifted from North America to the Pacific, where the continent of New Holland was, in the words of Bernard Smith, waiting to be “possessed and filled”. The rise and fall of Europe’s maritime empires meant that the remaining contenders were France, the absolutist monarchy, and Britain, the democratic, constitutional monarchy.
[Townhall - John Stossel] Earth Day is Saturday! Hooray?
"Saving humanity from the climate crisis," says EarthDay.org, requires us to "push away from the dirty fossil fuel economy."
Sounds logical.
But my latest video explains why doing that is cruel to poor people.
"Three billion people in the world still use less electricity than a typical refrigerator," explains Alex Epstein, author of "The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels." If they're going to have "their first well-paying jobs ... their first consistent supply of clean water ... a modern life ... that's going to depend on fossil fuels."
"When we look at solar and wind around the world," he answers, "it always correlates to rising prices and declining reliability. Why? Because solar and wind are intermittent. At any time, they can go near zero."
That means wind turbines and solar farms don't replace fossil fuel plants. You have to build them in addition to fossil fuel plants.
Germany invested heavily in solar and wind power. Elites around the world praised German politicians for creating record renewable power. But that didn't work so well when the winds slowed and clouds appeared.
Germans now pay much more for electricity, triple what Americans pay.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/20/2023 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Last night on The Five Geraldo again was all in on electric cars. He said they are inevitable and we just have to accept them. When one of the others said most people can't afford one he said, "The Chevy Volt is now down to 33 grand". He is blind to the problems with getting the rare metals and the cost of replacing the batteries. He is just like all the other climate crazies, refusing to accept the realities.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/20/2023 10:00 Comments ||
Top||
[NYPOST] The tape of a "strategy session" exposes progressive opinionated hairbags as a bunch of would-be goons.
The Post acquired a tape of the April 11 virtual meeting called by Housing Justice for All to brainstorm passage of the "Good Cause Eviction" statewide rent-control bill.
In it, reps from VOCAL-NY, Citizen Action, the Democratic Socialists of America, Make the Road and Communist Party USA Housing suggest everything up to trashing ("redecorating") the offices of politicians who resist.
Another lowlight: Talk of smashing trash cans at the home of an advocate on the other side.
Lest anyone think this was just blowing off steam, DSA member Andrew Hiller and others recalled a "favorite moment" hounding Real Estate Board of NY President Jim Whelan: "So we caught him eating lunch by himself, and we got a crowd of like 50 people to like, you know, start chanting ’shame’ and we walked past him. We like literally booed him all the way down the hall and Albany and he like went and like hid behind security. So that was a really good moment."
Another boast of successful action: Threatening protests at people’s homes.
"Senator Andrew Gounardes. He wasn’t on Good Cause, but we ran him down and told him if he signed, we wouldn’t come to his house. So, I guess he didn’t want us there, so he signed," boasted Renette Bradley of Housing Justice for All.
Threats of force against politicians.
Mobs chasing down the opposition, screaming at them.
These are not democratic tactics, but blackmail and bullying — mob rule.
Mussolini’s fascist ...anybody you disagree with, damn them... s would cheer.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2023 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#1
They need to you know like go like you know take a like running like jump at a like rolling donut. Jeebus these people are bugwit nuts.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/20/2023 10:06 Comments ||
Top||
[Independent Sentinel] A new federal Biden rule will force homebuyers with good credit scores to pay higher mortgage rates and fees so they can subsidize people with riskier credit ratings who want to buy a home.
It’s wealth redistribution and will be a disaster since risky homebuyers usually default. The feds will also temporarily ignore lenders’ debt-to-income ratio. It determines if homebuyers can afford to pay their mortgages each month.
The fees are allegedly minimal for now, but you know how that goes.
The fee changes will go into effect May 1 as part of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s push for affordable housing for risky buyers.
This will affect mortgages originating at private banks across the country. The federally backed home mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will enact the loan-level price adjustments or LLPAs.
Mortgage industry specialists say homebuyers with credit scores of 680 or higher will pay, for example, about $40 per month more on a home loan of $400,000. Homebuyers who make down payments of 15% to 20% will get socked with the largest fees, reports The Washington Times.
#4
I remember the sub-prime mortgage lending that created a real crisis. This is a way to avoid that by making frugal people pay for the ones who don't know how or don't want to. They have to make all people equally poor. Equity.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/20/2023 10:10 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Yeah. We know.
And the Hospital.
And the Dentist.
Loss is figured into store prices for risky shoppers.
Taxes for social services.
I deal with deadbeat accounts all the time and will probably write off a car's worth. again.
In fact, I'd be curious how much the honest person pays per year on such losses.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[NYPOST] The tape of a "strategy session" exposes progressive 
...anybody you disagree with, damn them...
